Well, they're tossing the "s" word around at Interior again. You know, the "s" word. "Science." Let's see if they pay closer attention to it than the old administration.
Yes, Ken Salazar, fresh out of the U.S. Senate and during his second day as Interior secretary for the Obama administration, pledged that science would drive decisions.
“I pledge to you that we will ensure the Interior Department’s decisions are based on sound science and the public interest, and not on the special interests," Secretary Salazar told Interior employees on Thursday.
Let's hope Interior holds to that pledge. After all, it was one of the things the Traveler wanted to see from the National Park Service in 2009.
But it seems we've heard that pledge before, haven't we?
Do you remember?
Back when former Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne wrote his cover letter to President Bush on the National Park Service's Centennial Initiative he promised that stewardship and science would guide decisions. And former NPS Director Bomar reiterated that during an interview with the Traveler in October 2007 at the National Park Foundation's Leadership Summit on Partnership and Philanthropy.
"When I came into the National Park Service, I didn't realize the in-depth that the good stewards in the national parks went to. Often, we'd be accused of studying things to death. If you didn't like the answer we'll do another study," she said at the time. "But I will say over time that I've come to really appreciate that, that we make good decisions based on good information."
The talk was good, but the science was ignored when it came time to rule on how many snowmobiles could be allowed in Yellowstone National Park.
Now, to be fair to Director Bomar, her predecessor, Fran Mainella, told the Traveler that her hands were tied by higher-ups in Interior when it came to snowmobiling in Yellowstone, so we assume the same hand was played when the most-recent snowmobile decision came out.
Which brings us back to Secretary Salazar's proclamation. Let's hope it holds water.
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Jim, so who decides which values are legitamite? You ask if both sides of an issue are equally legitamite and then answer your own question with, "I don't think so". You naturally believe (as I do) that our values are correct; yet individuals on the other side may be just as convinced that theirs are. Not all "value" issues are as cut and dried as racism, sexism etc. We believe that, as you say, the value is: ".... that Yellowstone recreation must not harm the environment, wildlife, and features of Yellowstone National Park." Others might argue that the value is, "to protect the recreational opportunities within Yellowstone National Park and the livelihoods of those individuals who eek out a living renting snowmobiles, and guiding and catering to winter visitors; while doing a MINIMUM (caps for emphasis) amount of damage." They might even point out, as snowmobile advocates often do to me, that the sign on the arch says, "For the enjoyment and benefit of the people". Or that any damage done (such as air pollution etc.) is only temporary, and does not impair the park for "future generations". Are both sides values legitamite? Very possibly. Isn't this, as you say, "....where letting science hold sway has its place"?
I am simply playing devil's advocate here. I agree that science is not the answer to everything, and that the last thing we want to do is make science god to the exclusion of our core values. But the opposite is also true, because that is exactly what we have been doing for the past eight years. Making decisions in ones personal life based solely on values is one thing. Make public policy that way is another, because the only person's values that count are the person making the decision; as we have seen. Science can be peer reviewed. A person's values, not so much. Especially when that person is in a very powerful position.
Frank,
I want to spend more time on what you wrote, but I find I am unable to do so tonight. I found out that a friend of mine died tonight back in Washington, DC. This does have an important NPS connection, as he was the founder of an anti-nuclear war vigil in Lafayette Park outside the White House, and was a man under intermittent persecution by the Park Service. I wrote a prose ode to him that I wrote mostly for my friends here in Montana to know how his inspiration has been an influence on my work for buffalo here.
However, the question of ethics, of course, is not a simple one, and I'd like to respond to your points line by line. Right now, I need to cop out and point you to essays I wrote regarding the way we approach ethics in Yellowstone. I wrote a long series of essays on John Locke, property rights, and Yellowstone National Park. Part 4 in particular begins to extrapolate my ethical views, but it's hard to read that as a stand alone. That is here: http://www.yellowstone-online.com/2007/02/part-1-john-locke-yellowstone-... . That gets us further down the path than I would intend for this discussion. If I find time, I will get more specifically again to what you write here; tonight, my heart is somewhere else.
Jim Macdonald
The Magic of Yellowstone
Yellowstone Newspaper
Jim's Eclectic World
@ Frank:
Maybe we are leaving the focus of this blog now, but the question of right and wrong, of values and rules is of course an old and fundamental one. Much of the history of philosophy is about this question and related ones.
Are you familiar with John Ralws? He proposed a "Gedankenexperiment" to determine values and rules as universally acceptable. In his opinion values and rules should looked at as if they were negotiated between individuals before those individuals can know about their place in the society that will live by those rules. If you don't know whether you will be black or white, man or woman, rich or poor, from a family with established influence or born to recent immigrants, you will negotiate rules that can be considered fair to everyone.
Of course it is just a Gedankenexperiment, but in his most influential book "A Theory of Justice" (1971 and revised by Rawls in 1999) he shows that the core of this idea can be transferred to reality.
Science is like statistics. If you want data to support a decision you can get it. Keep in mind that data on the other side is also readily available. I would hope that the new administration will be ethical and their decisions will be based on values that are at least somewhat in line with my own. Probably won't happen that way. So far I get the impression that decisions will be politically driven and that Obama is going to stand in front of the nation and tell them whatever they want to hear. His political career thus far has been one giant campaign, I hope he can find some time to govern as I worry the campaign for 2012 has already begun.
Did anyone hear Salazars welcome speech to the Department? He made some interesting comments about guns. I also got the impression that the NPS will recieve the curse of mega project money from the new stimulus package. The NPS does not need more "new stuff". It needs the resources to take care of what is already there. We will soon have many hastily prepared "green projects" that the current system can't manage and no capability of maintaining these new green things. Facility Management is a "science"
Wow, what a fascinating discussion!
It seems that what is needed is legislation fixing the "values" of the NPS into law. Perhaps it's there, perhaps it's not, I'm not well versed in NPS laws at all. Is the primary purpose preservation or recreation or raising revenue? Those seem to be the core of most NPS debates, whether snowmobiles or guns or construction or concessions.
I am the first one to say you can't legislate values or morality in the people, but it seems to me you can legislate the values of a unit of the government itself and write rules to support them.
This way, elected officials could (theoretically) debate the values of a department, then vote on the appropriate legislation, and that vote must be continued by all subsequent administrations unless and until elected officials re-visit the issue.
Right now, it seems too easy for the Executive Branch to fiddle around with the NPS (and most other government functions) to suit their own constituencies, values be damned. Of course that speaks to Presidential power grabs over the decades, and all the Congresses that have allowed it to happen ...
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My travels through the National Park System: americaincontext.com
Science is not about goals, its about cause & effect. I'm a scientist: with adequate data, on a good day I can estimate the probabilities of different outcomes for a given management alternative. I can make inferences about times or places I haven't observed, or about causal mechanisms. But, I don't set values for those possible outcomes, and I don't dictate goals or management actions.
The goals or values for NPS are in law: the 1916 organic act has the famous statement about preserving resources "unimpared for the enjoyment of future generations". {http://www.nps.gov/legacy/organic-act.htm} Beyond that, each NPS unit has a foundation statement that explicitly states the values and purposes of that unit from its authorizing legislation, and the 1988 Redwood National Park Act requires NPS units to be managed to preserve those values, notwithstanding statements in the authorizing legislation allowing hunting, etc.. [So, snowmobiles and jetskis and mountain bikes and low-level overflights are pretty clearly ok in most national recreation areas; not so much in units with wildlife, wilderness, serenity, etc. emphasized in their foundation statements, with a pretty continuous gradation in between.]
The 1998 NP Omnibus management act states "The Secretary shall … assure the full and proper utilization of the results of scientific studies for park management decisions" and calls for "condition-based management". It even requires that the trend in the condition of resources be a significant factor in the annual performance evaluation of each superintendent.
Those parts of the 1998 act haven't been particularly followed the past years: in part due to insufficient data or insufficient science to extract information from the available data; in some cases due to political decisions trumping solid data and science.
From the inside, it appears that Salazar means what he says about science, but the key part of the quote above is public interest instead of special interest.